Who will lead and who will be left on the sidelines?

Road To Copenhagen ,  Ralph Ashton, Contributor   |  Tue, 11/03/2009 10:13 AM  |  Environment

It remains to be seen if world leaders meet the challenge issued by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the G20 Leaders Summit in Pittsburgh to “give a stronger mandate, a stronger push and clearer directions to our negotiators for the success of Copenhagen”.

If an outcome is not delivered in December to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level that avoids dangerous climate change, we will have to keep working until we can deliver an agreement that does.
There is no “it was all too hard” option on this one. Long after the topic becomes passé and the messages repetitive, there will be work to be done.

Long after late night compromises are elicited and frustrations felt, there will be work to be done. And long after the negotiating rooms are empty, there will be work to be done. No amount of spin can change the scale of the task or its absolute necessity.

As UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown highlighted in his address to the Major Economies Forum in October, “there are now fewer than fifty days to set the course of the next fifty years and more”.
If we are to succeed, we need to take a long-term view of where we are going, where we need to be, and how we are going to get there.

We need to start with what is immediately possible while forging a deliberate path to what is ultimately necessary.

An incentive system for the better management of all terrestrial carbon (carbon stored in forests, peatlands, vegetation and soils) is an essential element of both the ultimate and the immediate, especially while we continue to develop other mitigation technologies and strategies.

Forward-looking institutions will be needed to lead us from our current land use paradigm to one that provides sufficient food, fibre, and fuel to a burgeoning population in a carbon-constrained world. And long-term, genuine partnerships between nations will be required.

We need to move from the current committed but ad hoc and fragmented reaction to a coordinated and sustained response.

The work that Indonesia has undertaken with Australia, Germany, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Japan and France to advance the climate and forestry agenda shows the way.

This week, as the United Nations Climate Change talks resume in Barcelona and the G20 Finance Ministers meet in Scotland, nations are retreating to regional alliances to consolidate their negotiating position in the name of national interest.

The problem is that this is not just another trade negotiation.

There will be no individual winners or losers. We all succeed or we all fail. Our business as usual emissions pathway takes us to a staggering atmospheric CO2e concentration of 950ppm by the end of the century.

Current commitments — while perhaps grand sounding — do not get us much below 700ppm. But we need to be somewhere below 450ppm, and probably as low as 300ppm.

How will we bridge that gap?

It requires a concerted effort from developed, rapidly emerging, and developing countries.

China has committed to “energetically increase forest carbon” and “forest coverage by 40 million hectares and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion cubic meters by 2020 from the 2005 levels”. And Indonesia has committed to changing the status of the forest sector from a net emitter to a net sink by 2030.

The list can go on with the current commitments from Brazil, Mexico, India, and South Africa.

And just last week, the President of the tiny Caribbean nation of Suriname — with 90 percent of its land under forests and 13 percent in protected areas — launched the country’s “Pathway to Green Economic Development” with these words:
“We cannot stand on the sidelines while the world negotiates.

“Even though Suriname did not contribute to climate change, we cannot wait for the world to fix the problem. That is why we have set out this Pathway and chosen to be an active part of the negotiations at the regional and global level. And to have a voice in the decisions that are made about preserving forests and about low-carbon economic development.”

So the old excuse from developed countries of “we won’t act until you act” rings hollow. The world has moved on.

Perhaps that is why the EU has committed significant funding for adaptation in the developing world and to reduce its own emissions by 30 percent by 2020, why Norway has offered a 40 percent mid-term reduction target if the rest of the world plays ball, and why Japan has committed to a 25 percent cut.

And why Australia and New Zealand have similar offers on the table. The APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in mid-November brings together the leaders of 21 economies that are critical to a successful Copenhagen treaty.

It includes four of the top six emitters — China, United States, Indonesia, and Russia (the other two being Brazil and the EU). The top six account for roughly 60 percent of all global emissions. It includes a further five of the top 20 emitters — Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, and Thailand.

And some of the developing countries with the most significant forests, peatlands, and other terrestrial carbon including Chile, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru and Vietnam.

This APEC meeting is perhaps the final opportunity before Copenhagen to demonstrate the kind of leadership that can break through the tightly held positions and narrow self-interest to a place where the world really can “seal the deal” in Copenhagen.

Who will have the courage to put something meaningful on the table that opens the floodgates and allows others to follow? Who will grasp this opportunity and go down in history as the single man or woman who made it happen? And who will be left on the sidelines?

Though much has been accomplished, good intentions must be translated into commitments, financing and action. These, most importantly, must be translated into outcomes.

Now is not the time to exert pressure to slow the pace of action. It is the time to drive the transition to a new era — of low-carbon economies and truly global alliances and action. Because until we wrestle control of the trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions and drag it downwards, there is work to be done.


The writer is convenor and chair of the international Terrestrial Carbon Group, Senior Policy Fellow at the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, and visiting scholar at the Center for Environment, Economy, and Society at Columbia University. He can be reached at ralph.ashton@terrestrialcarbon.org

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